The Amityville Horror, by Jay Anson. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977

The Amityville Horror, by Jay Anson. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1977. 201 pages, $7.95. Reviewed by Robert L. Morris This book claims to be the true account of a month of terrifying "paranormal" events that occurred to a Long Island family when they moved into a house in Amityville, New York, that had been the scene of a mass murder. Throughout the book there are strong suggestions that the events were demonic in origin. On the copyright page, the Library of Congress subject listings are "1. Demon- ology—Case studies. 2. Psychical research—United States—Case studies." The next page contains the following statement: "The names of several individuals mentioned in this book have been changed to protect their privacy. However, all facts and events, as far as we have been able to verify them, are strictly accurate." The front cover of the book's dust jacket contains the words: "A True Story." A close reading, plus a knowledge of details that later emerged, suggests that this book would be more appropriately indexed under "Fiction—Fantasy and horror." In fact it is almost a textbook illustration of bad investigative journalism, made especially onerous by its potential to terrify and mislead people and to serve as a form of religious propaganda. To explore this in detail, we first need an outline of the events that supposed- ly took place, as described in the text of the book, plus a prologue derived from a segment of a New York television show about the case. On November 13, 1974, Ronald DeFeo shot to death six members of his family at their home in Amityville. Shortly after, DeFeo was sentenced to six con- secutive life terms, despite a plea for insanity by his attorney because DeFeo claimed to have heard voices in the house telling him what to do. In the early middle of November 1975, George and Kathy Lutz were shown the house by a realtor who, at the completion of the tour, told the couple of the house's history. They nevertheless agreed to buy the house, since the price was good. On December 18, the Lutzes and their three children moved in. Their house was blessed by a friend, Father Frank Mancuso, in the afternoon. Earlier that day Mancuso had lunched with four friends, including three priests who had advised him of the house's history and had suggested he not go. During the blessing, Mancuso heard a strong, masculine voice say, "Get out!" Twenty-eight days later, on January 15, 1976, the Lutzes moved out, leaving their possessions behind. During these twenty-eight days the Lutz family, so the story goes, was beset by a wide variety of unusual events. Some were physical: a heavy door was ripped open, dangling on one hinge; hundreds of flies infested a room in the middle of winter; the telephone mysteriously malfunctioned, especially during calls between the Lutzes and Mancuso; a four-foot lion statue moved about the house; windows and doors were thrown open, panes broken, window locks bent out of shape; Mrs. Lutz levitated while sleeping and acquired marks and sores on her body; mysterious green slime oozed from the ceiling in a Spring/Summer 1978 95 hallway; and so on. Some phenomena were experiential: Mrs. Lutz felt the em- brace and fondling of unseen entities; Mr. Lutz felt a constant chill despite high thermostat temperatures; the Lutzes' daughter acquired a piglike playmate; the Lutzes saw apparitions of a pig and a demonic figure; the children misbehaved ex- cessively and the family dog slept a lot and avoided certain rooms; marching music was heard; et cetera. During this same period of time, Father Mancuso is said to have experienced unusual phenomena also, although his only contact with the Lutzes afterward was an occasional phone call (some calls got through, although most did not). A few hours after his blessing of the house, the hood of his car smashed back against his windshield, tearing loose a hinge, and the door flew open. Then the car stalled. In the following month, Mancuso was beset by a series of illnesses, including sores on his hands and the flu, and a strong unexplained stench emanat- ing from his room at the rectory following a votive Mass on behalf of the Lutzes. Approximately two weeks after they moved out, the Lutzes met William Weber, an attorney representing Ronald DeFeo, through a mutual friend. A week later, on February 5, Weber stated on a local TV news program (described in the prologue) that he hoped to prove that some force capable of influencing hu- man behavior (including his client's) existed at the Amityville house, that he had commissioned scientists to rule out certain kinds of physical phenomena, and that it would then be turned over to a group of psychic researchers. Two weeks later the Lutzes held a press conference in Weber's office, at which time they an- nounced that they intended to keep the house for awhile but not live in it, and were awaiting the results of an investigation by parapsychologists and other pro- fessional occult researchers. On February 18, according to the epilogue, a group of people spent the night at the Amityville house and conducted informal investigations, including three seances. Included were a clairvoyant, a demonologist, two psychics, two parapsychology field investigators, and a local TV news crew. Several reported unusual subjective impressions, but that was all. In March the Lutzes moved to California and posted their house for sale. Since the book's publication, additional information has emerged. Accord- ing to Curt Suplee's book review in the Washington Post (Dec. 9, 1977), the Lut- zes were at about this time advised by a friend to sell their story to Prentice-Hall. A Prentice-Hall editor put the Lutzes in contact with a New York writer of documentary scripts, Jay Anson. Working from tapes provided by the Lutzes, plus some interviews with Father Mancuso (and local police officials, according to Anson's afterword), he turned out the book in three to four months. The Lutzes and Anson share the book copyright, although Anson retains the movie rights exclusively. The book has become a national best-seller in hardback and is scheduled for paperback release. The Lutzes have emerged from seclusion and have appeared on television. According to an article in People (Feb. 13, 1978) by Burstein and Reilly, the Amityville house is now owned and occupied by a new family, who report no unusual phenomena save for extensive harassment by tourists and the curious. The new family "have sued the Lutzes, Prentice-Hall, and Anson for $1.1 million 96 THE SKEPTICAL INQUIRER in damages—and are trying to enjoin them from characterizing their story as true." This is the picture as it has been presented to the public. The basic problem is that Anson appears to have made only meager attempts to assess the truthfulness of the Lutzes' story, contrary to his own claims in the book. His only listed sources of information are joint tapes made by the Lutzes, plus additional interviews with Father Mancuso and local police officials. He does not claim to have talked directly with the Lutzes or to have questioned them in any way. Father Mancuso is a poor witness because he set foot in the house only once, and that immediately after having been warned by other priests to stay away. Local police officials were not directly involved in any of the phenomena. The most interesting witnesses would have been others who reported unusual feelings in the house (to see if they corroborated the Lutzes' descriptions of their experiences) and the repairmen called to fix damage done to the house, who would have commented on the nature and extent of the actual damage done. No interviews were described with the scientists mentioned by DeFeo's lawyer or with the parapsychologists from the Psychical Research Foundation. Since I am a former employee of the PRF, I know both investigators. One of them, Jerry Solfvin, had indeed talked to Anson at some length by phone. He described the PRF's involvement in a letter to me as follows: We didn't carry out an investigation there—just an informal visit on my part, and a collecting of the Lutzes' reports (after they moved) by George K. The case wasn't interesting to us because the reports were confined to subjective responses from the Lutzes, and these were not at all impressive or even characteristic of these cases. All in all, the family moved out rather quickly (about a month after moving in) and refused to return, making further investigation less appealing to us. In addition to his failure to collect (or at least to include) interview data from the most important witnesses, Anson never (apparently) visited the house himself to check on the damages described, collect impressions of his own, or do investigative journalism of any thorough sort. Thus Anson's statement in the afterword (p. 197), "To the extent that I can verify them, all the events in this book are true," is patently false. It should read, "To the extent that I bothered to verify. ..." The flaws of this book as evidence for the "paranormal" can be further seen by considering some of the basic problems of spontaneous cases investigations in parapsychology, in general. 1. Witnesses may be totally unaware of factors involved in the production of certain phenomena. For instance, the flies that suddenly appeared in one of the rooms (pp. 29, 45) may have hatched from eggs in something that was being stored in the room (at the time it was mainly a storage room), perhaps even something rather recently purchased.

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